


Bodies

by NezumiPi



Series: Bodies and Minds [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Creepy Mycroft, Drug Use, Paternal Lestrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:20:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NezumiPi/pseuds/NezumiPi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Reichenbach. Watson, Lestrade, and Mycroft go back into Sherlock's life to try to understand his death.  Contains: jazz hands and urination on a business card.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jazz Hands

**Author's Note:**

> **  
>  **  
>  **Greetings! I'm mixing things up with the structure of the story – thought I'd try something new. Except for the first and last chapters, each bit of the story is labeled as a memory or a conversation. Sometimes Mycroft and Lestrade are written as telling John about an incident with Sherlock; other times, their stories are written as present-tense flashbacks. You can assume that all of these memories are being conveyed to John. Sorry for all of the structural changes; I'm still working on finding the clearest way to tell this story.**   
>  **   
>  **
> 
> * * *

It was Sally Donovan who officially confirmed the identity of Sherlock Holmes' body. They knew he had a brother, but this Mycroft Holmes individual apparently could not be reached. Maybe the brother was too upset to answer the phone, of maybe he was just out of town, or maybe – knowing Sherlock – they didn't get on too well.

No one had even really considered asking John Watson to do it. He was distraught in a way that Donovan would have considered unseemly if she weren't so desensitized to the shock of grieving families.

There was that landlady of his; she had seemed to know Sherlock well enough, but they weren't going to drag an old woman down to the morgue when there were alternatives.

Sally watched Lestrade swallow heavily and widen his eyes to keep tears from falling, steeling himself for what he obviously saw as his responsibility. She knew that he had never really believed Holmes to be a fraud – and since when did she think of him as 'Holmes' instead of 'Freak'? Even in her thoughts, Donovan realized she was reluctant to speak ill of the dead, even if all the evidence pointed toward the deceased being a kidnapper, and quite likely a murderer as well.

She wasn't quite sure how to feel about this newfound hesitance to insult Sherlock Holmes.

Sally sat down next to Lestrade. "Obviously, he and I never got along, but I never…" There wasn't a good way to end that sentence. She tried again. "I know you've, you've tried to look out for him a bit, you've had an," she paused, "an affection for him. No matter how things ended. And I would imagine you don't want to see him like this."

They had both seen so many corpses identified in the course of their careers. In the name of preserving evidence, the corpse was cleaned, but all injuries were maintained in their entirety; the ID had to be made before the morticians could try to reconstruct things for the wake. The right side of Sherlock's skull had been crushed in the fall, and there was something that seemed especially wrong about that, the fact that the impact hadn't just destroyed his body, but his brain as well. His fraudulent brain, she reminded herself: he was clever, but the genius had been faked.

"You don't have to make the ID," finished Donovan. "I can do it for you." They weren't going to see eye-to-eye on Sherlock Holmes, not now, probably not ever, but it was obvious Greg was grieving. It was the least she could do.

Lestrade turned to look at her with a slight twitch, as though he had just noticed she was there. "Thank you," he said softly. Then he turned his head to face forward once more, as if she were already gone.

* * *

John Watson was comfortable with bodies. He always had been; if you couldn't stand the colors and the smells, you really didn't belong in medicine, or in the military for that matter. He had even developed a certain comfort level with _dead_ bodies; medical school autopsies had bored him, but they hadn't particularly bothered him.

At least not until he went to Afghanistan. There, autopsies were almost never required to determine the cause of death - that was usually self-evident – but John had been called upon repeatedly to do post-mortem reconstructive work, to determine if enough bone could be reassembled that a mortician could create a recognizable face. If John couldn't wire together enough fragments, if the damage was too extensive ( _the ribcage was rent in two, only a sliver of head and neck remained_ ) or major pieces could not be recovered from the combat site ( _a nineteen-year-old's jawbone_ ), then the body would be cremated before repatriation.

They were required for both practical and regulatory reasons to differentiate among deaths from combat, disease or natural causes, and suicide. Most of the suicides were easily classified as such ( _usually gunshot wound to the head, usually could not be reconstructed_ ), as were most combat deaths, but there were some cases which were uncertain, like when a twenty-three year old man ran into the middle of a firefight with no order, gun unfired, or when a thirty-six year old walks down side paths with no apparent goal or reason, with no bomb detectors or armor, and ends up blown up by an IED.

In these cases, they were required to perform what was known as a psychological autopsy, an investigation into whether the deceased acted with the intent to die, and what events, beliefs, or experiences led to that state. Physiological data beyond a toxicology screening were usually uninformative, but Watson had been involved in the procedure several times, on the theory that he might be aware certain stressors, pain, or neurological symptoms that might have influenced the "mortal outcome." ( _god, that was something he didn't miss: the military double-speak_ )

The psychological autopsy was its own sort of detective work – deducing thoughts instead of behavior. And now John Watson was going to apply it to Sherlock's death.

Was it somehow murder? And if it was suicide, why? Did he care about others' esteem more than he let on? Was the thought of losing to Moriarty too much to bear? Had he been lonely underneath the aloofness? It was a shock, really, to think of how little he knew about Sherlock. Mycroft had been the only family member at the funeral – were Sherlock's parents living? ( _Was he feuding with them, too?_ ) Other siblings? Cousins?

Mycroft.

God, John wanted to kill him. He wasn't going to jump to conclusions ( _Sherlock would disapprove_ ), but somehow, this was most certainly the fault of Mycroft Holmes. Maybe now that Sherlock was dead, his obsessive investigative spirit had been passed on to Watson, because John now felt that he literally _must_ find out.

It would at least keep the homicidal urges at bay. ( _He hoped._ )

* * *

Watson scrolled through his emails, vaguely registering the subject lines but failing to open any. He could guess what they would say and he didn't particularly care.

The one from Lestrade had a video attachment. Probably a virus. Would probably delete everything on his computer.

John opened it.

_Wasn't sure whether I should send this to you._

_I miss him too. Maybe we should get a pint._

_-GL_

The still from the video was a Sherlock, glassy-eyed, drugged, and leaning against the fence outside Irene Adler's house.

John hesitated for a few moments before clicking play.

The video was shaky and grainy, clearly an inexpert recording on a smartphone. Sherlock was looking from one hand to the other, fingers pursed before spreading them wide. The gesture was rather like flicking water at someone, only in slow motion and without the water.

"What're you doing there, Sherlock?" Greg's voice, from behind the camera. "What's this?" A hand reached into view and mimicked the gesture Sherlock had made.

"Jazz hands!" Sherlock whispered, eyes wide and intense.

"Jazz hands? Is that so? Have you decided to become a dancer?"

"No," Sherlock shook his head, "no, I'm a consulting detective."

"I know you are." Greg's voice was warm and more than a bit patronizing. "I just wanted to know if you were becoming a dancer as well."

"I don't dance well. I dance brilliant!" On the last word, Sherlock made his jazz hands motion again.

Lestrade chuckled. "All right then. You dance brilliant. You gonna take John out some time?"

All of a sudden, Sherlock looked fearful. "Who's going to take John out?" He tried – unsuccessfully – to stand. "We've got to-"

"Relax." Greg's hand pushed Sherlock back to the ground. "I didn't mean like that, you little idiot. I meant take him out on a date. Take him out dancing."

"Oh, yes, but…well. He's not, he's…" Sherlock began making a motion with his hands that seemed to outline something roughly the size and shape of a cantaloupe before eyeing the cameraman suspiciously and making the jazz hands gesture once more.

He then tipped to the left and rested his head on a fence post, drooling slightly.

The video ended and John Watson couldn't properly tell the difference between laughing and crying.

* * *

It was easier not to be angry at Lestrade. He had always been on Sherlock's side, and even though he had arrested him, he had resisted until his superiors demanded it, always believing that Sherlock would either be proven right in the end or a mysterious phone call from Mycroft Holmes would put the whole matter to rest.

And he had been punished already.

Not for arresting Sherlock, of course, but for allowing him onto investigations in the first place. He was suspended from NSY, probably going to be fired, probably going to lose his pension.

So when John went to visit Lestrade at his temporary flat (Greg and his wife were apparently on the outs again.), he was relieved to find that he felt far more pity than ire.

He was nursing a cheap beer and sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair. "I must've done something to my back moving in here," he explained. "It's rubbish getting old. Don't do it."

John almost said, 'Sherlock took that advice,' but he held his tongue. Sherlock was the subject of all of his sentences these days, mostly ones he kept to himself. It was rather like a ringing in his ears. "How are you holding up?"

"Eh," Greg shrugged. "Better than you, I would guess." He took another sip of his beer. "But I miss him, don't get me wrong. Even without a case, I miss his irritating little voice and creepy little eyes." He cracked a thin smile to show his complaints were affectionate.

John nodded. It suddenly occurred to him that he could have asked Greg to move in with him – money had to be tight – but that felt too much like trying to replace Sherlock. No one could replace Sherlock.

"How are you holding up?" asked Greg. "I saw you at the funeral."

"I'm…I'm…not well, I suppose," said John stiffly. "I just…" He clenched his jaw. "I can't talk about this. Sorry."

"Of course," said Greg. But what else were they going to talk about? What did they really have in common besides Sherlock? "You saw the video?"

"Yeah," John's nose twitched. "You want to know how he's-, how I've changed? I watched it and the first thing I thought was that isn't how you do jazz hands."

Greg snorted.

"I'm starting a new project. I don't know if I'll put it on the blog or not. Probably not." John paused to run a finger across his eyebrows. "I want to know how he got to where- Why he-" John couldn't say 'died', couldn't say 'jumped', couldn't say 'fell'. He let Lestrade fill in the blanks.

"Well if anyone can figure him out, it'd be you. I could never figure out what was going on in that head of his."

"You've known him longer. On that first case, you said you'd known him for five years."

"That's right, but it doesn't mean I've got a clue what he was really all about."

And damn it that didn't sting, hearing Greg use the past tense. What he _was_ all about. John tried to shake it off. "Could you tell me about what he was like? How things were back then?"

Lestrade pursed his lips, then shrugged as if to say it couldn't do any harm now. "Yeah, yeah, I don't know if it'll really help you much, but I can tell you about that stuff. I guess you already know most of it anyway."

* * *

"All right, here's one," said Lestrade. "Here's how he ruined Simon and Garfunkel for me."

John raised an eyebrow.

"I had known him a couple of years and I was giving him a ride back from a crime scene. And, oh and you gotta know that my wife is named Cecelia, I don't know if I ever mentioned that. Anyways, their song _Cecelia_ comes on the radio, you know that one?"

"Um, yes, I think so."

"Right, so we're listening to it, or rather I'm listening and he's staring into space all creepy-like, and then they get to this part where he's singing about making love to her and then the song goes, 'I get up to wash my face, when I get back to bed, someone's taken my place'." Lestrade paused and screwed up his face. "And Sherlock mutters that it's 'preposterous'. He's saying what would cause a man in bed with a woman to suddenly get all 'preoccupied with facial hygiene' if he's planning to get back in bed."

John almost smiled.

"Well, I slammed on the brakes right there and asked him how on earth a grown man who has not been living under a rock could possibly not understand that reference. And you know what he did?"

"What?"

"He corrected my driving," said Lestrade. And then he started to giggle. Not laugh, giggle, actually giggle. Because it was funny. "He corrected my bloody driving. Told me I shouldn't stop suddenly like that. It might cause a crash."

It was silent and lasted no more than a moment, but John laughed.


	2. Cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Greetings! I'm mixing things up with the structure of the story – thought I'd try something new. John's flashbacks of his time with Sherlock are always in italics. Sometimes Mycroft and Lestrade are written as telling John about an incident with Sherlock; other times, their stories are written as present-tense flashbacks. You can assume that all of these memories are being conveyed to John.**
> 
> * * *

**John's Memory**

It's a month or so after they dealt with that banker-smuggler and Sherlock is in one of his bored! fugues. John comes come from the surgery to find Sherlock lying on the couch in the exact same position he was when he left: sprawled in his blue dressing gown with his legs in an upward angled figure four, one arm flung dramatically to the side and the other pressed across his face. There was a plate of toast, lying uneaten on the table beside him, his arm forming a bridge across the gap.

Ants were taking advantage of it. Honest-to-goodness ants were crawling over his body and across his arm to the toast. One was even turning circles, apparently lost in the vast expanse of Sherlock's neck.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Sherlock tipped his head, still oblivious to his insect passengers. "I was just thinking of different ways to get rid of fingerprints."

"You mean like dusting?"

"No, no, I mean my fingerprints. Sure, they could be burned off, but that's so pedestrian."

John sighed and threw the toast in the rubbish.

* * *

**Conversation between John and Mycroft**

"Bit of an odd location," said Mycroft.

He was leaning on his umbrella as John unlocked the back door to Angelo's restaurant. It had been an easy enough favor to ask. "Neutral ground. Maybe it's still bugged, probably still bugged, but at least I know this place better than you do."

They sat opposite one another, a small round table between them. John could feel his gun pressing against his back. Maybe he shouldn't have brought it. Too tempting.

"You're going to tell me everything," said John. It was not a fucking request. "You're going to tell me everything you told Moriarty and everything you didn't."

"Your loyalty," said Mycroft, not quite detached, "is touching."

"And you're not going to do that. You're not going to _read_ me or make your bloody observations or your smug remarks."

"What would you like to know? Shall I tell you that he took three years of ballet? Didn't matter that no one thought it was a good idea, didn't matter that he was awful at it, didn't matter that he didn't even enjoy it. He decided that he was going to take ballet and so he was bloody well going to do it."

John looked up from his notebook. "Right then, keep talking."

* * *

**Mycroft's Memory**

The first thing Mycroft really remembers about Sherlock is the tantrums. He was only seven when Sherlock is born and unless it has blue skin or eleven toes, there isn't much for a seven-year-old to notice about a baby.

As his brother grows, Mycroft begins to suspect that other toddlers are not quite this loud, that they don't usually scream so much and over quite so many things.

At the moment, Sherlock is four years old and is lying on the floor of the kitchen shouting, "NO! NO! NO! NO!" Most youngsters would have been satisfied with a single prolonged, "NOOOO!" but Sherlock has to be contrary and staccato apparently suits him. Mummy is standing over Sherlock, mostly ignoring him but also making sure that he doesn't hit his head too badly. Father is out.

"What's he crying about?" asks Mycroft. It's difficult to concentrate on his schoolwork with all this racket.

"He wants his weather book."

"Oh." Ever since he got that stupid book about the weather for his birthday, Sherlock had carried it everywhere. He even slept with it, cuddling it like a teddy bear. It had inevitably disintegrated.

"NO!" Thump. "NO!" Thump. "NO!" Sherlock is now kicking the wall in between shrieks.

"Maybe I could go and get him a new one," says Mycroft, though he knows that if he can't find _exactly_ the same book, Sherlock will reject it.

"NO!" THUMP. "NO!" THUMP. "NO!" Sherlock is now kicking the wall with both feet.

"Don't worry about it." Mummy kisses Mycroft's forehead. "He'll tire himself out eventually."

* * *

**Mycroft's Memory**

Sherlock is six and Mycroft is thirteen. Mummy is worried about Mycroft because he never seems to be terribly interested in anything. She wonders if Mycroft is unhappy, but he really isn't, because unhappy is a feeling and Mycroft doesn't feel much of anything. He's always been this way, as if his life had a dimmer switch, had the volume turned very far down.

Sherlock is the opposite. His volume is turned to maximum. Sounds are too loud, colors are too bright, and he is forever distracted by every little detail. Mummy takes him for his walkaround at his new school and he holds his tongue for less than a minute before announcing, "Someone was crawling on this table! You can tell by the smudges! And here is a curly red hair!"

Despite it all, Mycroft rather likes his younger brother. He likes to teach him new things. He feels a small sort of happiness when Sherlock masters a skill or solves a puzzle.

But there is one thing Sherlock won't learn, and that is how to fake.

He's learning how to lie of course, every child does, but there's a certain kind of faking, pretending to be normal, acting like you care and acting like you're human, even if you're really not.

( _John's grip on his pencil tightens when Mycroft suggests that Sherlock was not quite human._ )

Father taught Mycroft how to keep his thoughts and his actions separate, how to decide whether it was advantageous to be authentic or best to go about playacting, blending in. Father tries to teach the same lesson to Sherlock, but it never seems to stick.

The neighbor's dog dies. Sherlock digs it up and mummifies it. He stores the organs in little clay pots he made at school.

Mycroft tells him that if he wants to see mummies, they can go to the museum. Mycroft reburies the dog and tells Sherlock he must never do that again.

* * *

**Mycroft's Memory**

Sherlock is eight and Mycroft is fifteen when it happens.

Father comes home late from work and Sherlock stares at him, head cocked to the side. "You've been with Ms. Whitman, from Hanover Street."

"Quit talking nonsense," says Father, and Mycroft desperately wants to intervene, but he's not sure how.

"It's not nonsense," says Sherlock, arms akimbo and face indignant. "You smell like soap on your whole body, not just your face or hands, so you must have washed up some place other than work. You've got a bit of a leaf from a cherry tree stuck to your shoe and hers is the only yard nearby that has cherry trees. And you've got some lipstick on your shirt sleeve, right there, see? It's that awful orange color she wears. And your jacket smells like perfume, but it's not Mummy's."

All three of them – Mummy, Mycroft, and Father – are staring at Sherlock, mouths hanging just slightly open. It's Mycroft who moves first. He grabs Sherlock's wrist, a little more roughly than is strictly necessary, and drags him to the staircase.

"But I want to get my trains!" says Sherlock.

"Not now," says Mycroft. He can hear Mummy and Father yelling in the sitting room. There's a smashing sound, like broken glass and he wonders if he should call the police.

Sherlock is still pouting for his trains, apparently oblivious to what's happened.

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

Watson was back at Greg's flat, having concluded that spending any length of time with Mycroft Holmes was exhausting.

"You got to realize," said Lestrade, "I'm happy to tell you what you want to know about him, but, er…" He tipped his head from one side to the other as if weighing something over. "Some parts of it are kind of funny, like the _Cecelia_ story, but some parts aren't." He leaned forward in a concerned sort of way. "Maybe you don't need any more depressing news right now, eh?"

John shook his head. "I want to know."

"All right then. Well, let's see. The first time I met him, well actually, no it was before that. See, the first time I met him, I didn't know it was him. I'm not making much sense, am I?"

John shrugged and gestured for Lestrade to continue.

"It was just before Christmas and I had just got my promotion to Detective Inspector, so me and a couple of blokes from work were going out for a few drinks to celebrate. More than a few. I was pretty pissed. But then I see this guy – it was pouring rain, warm year – he's completely bald and he's wearing nice clothes, like a tailored suit but it doesn't fit him. It's too baggy and it's too short in the legs and the arms. But what's really striking is the way he's standing. He's not bending to shield himself from the rain at all. He's just staring across the street like it's the most natural thing in the world."

"And that was Sherlock?"

"Well, I didn't know it, then. Actually, I thought that maybe he was mentally ill or had learning disabilities or something. He didn't know well enough to come in out of the rain, obviously, so I thought we might need to section him."

"How'd that work out?"

"Well, I tried to act as sober as I could and I asked him he were lost. He tells me he knows exactly where he is, because he is 'thankfully unafflicted by the preponderant stupidity' which everyone else has. I figured if he could put a sentence like that together, Section didn't apply and we went on to the next bar. No law against being weird."

"You ever figure out what he was up to?"

"I asked him a few years later and he said he was observing which was more than could be expected of my staff." Lestrade's voice became deeper and less nasal when he repeated Sherlock's words. "So, basically no."

* * *

**Greg's Memory**

What Lestrade really thinks of as 'meeting Sherlock' happens four months later. He's a crime scene, a homicide that's looking pretty straightforward. Frankly, he's enjoying being in charge. Before this, he was working under a DI named Amelia Jenkins with whom he'd had some pretty substantive philosophical differences. Jenkins was a letter-of-the-law sort of person, which was fine as far as it went, but Greg takes a more pragmatic approach.

Case and point.

"There's a junkie perched on the fence outside," says one of the sergeants. "He's lit up, babbling like a loon."

"He hurting anybody?" asks Greg, and when the sergeant shakes her head, he says, "Well, then let's do a little catch and release, shall we?"

Lestrade will arrest dealers and he'll arrest users who are hurting people or making public spaces unusable, but if they're just destroying themselves, he doesn't see why he has to help the process along. So he finishes up at the crime scene, getting all the photographs and making sure his forensics team has measured blood spatters and boot prints. Then he leaves the cottage to see to the junkie who's cuffed to the bench.

"Are you in charge here?" asks the kid. He's pale and wild-eyed, with little twitches in his hands and his face. He's obviously high. "Because nobody is listening to me. You'd think the coffers of England would be deep enough to afford some quality policing, but apparently not. Are you all blind?"

"Well," says Greg, "I'm listening to you right now. What've you got to say?"

"You're thinking it's her husband, aren't you?"

"I can't comment on an investigation."

"Oh, because I'm obviously from the press. Well spotted." The thick sarcasm is apparent even through the kid's drugged twitching. "Anyway, of course you think that because you're all monstrously inept, but it couldn't have been the husband. He's taller than she is in the family photographs and she's got to be 5'6". Our killer had to be shorter than the victim and thus almost certainly female."

"And how do you know that?"

"I don't _know_. I _observe_ ," he says haughtily. "The shots were fired upwards through the victim's torso. For a taller man to do that, he would have had to be seated or on his knees, but there are scuff marks on the floor from where the shooter was pushed back by the weapon's recoil. Only works for a standing shooter." The kid turns his face to the side and asks himself in a nasal voice, "But what if the shooter was crouching?" He answers himself. "Then recoil would have toppled him over, not caused him to skid backwards. It's a matter of physics. Those scuffs prove the shooter was a woman or extremely short man. Not the husband."

Now Lestrade is intrigued. He's not sure he agrees with the man's reasoning, not yet, but this isn't just drugged rambling; there's sense in it. "How do we know the scuff marks weren't made long before the crime?"

"Possible, but highly unlikely. Judging by the state of the shrubberies, this couple has occupied this cottage for seven to ten years. The scuff marks are in the corner next to a heavy refrigerator. It's unlikely they've moved it. They don't have small children, so no one is likely to be running or otherwise moving forcefully right near a corner. Adults only do that in open spaces."

Lestrade sits down on the bench. "What's a smart bloke like you doing drugging out on the streets?"

The kid sneers. "What's an idiot like you doing as a Detective Inspector?"

"Inspecting detectives, naturally."

A smile, a small one.

Lestrade pulls out a card and jots his direct line on the back of it. He's given this spiel before. "Look," he says, "you seem like you know your way around. No one's asking you to rat on your friends-"

"I don't have friends."

Greg pauses, his rhythm broken. "Ah, no one's asking you to rat on…um, anyone you like, but if you think something bad is going to go down, you give me a call."

The kid grips the card daintily with his thumb and forefinger, as though it's dirty. "I'm not anyone's confidential informant."

"What are you then?"

"A detective."

"Maybe you will be with a mind like that. We can always use clever people."

"I _am_ a detective." He looks Lestrade in the eye. "When's the last time you _detected_ anything?"

Greg just grins and pulls out the keys to uncuff the kid.

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

"I didn't realize it was the same kid," said Lestrade. "There's a big difference between shaved head and short hair. He looked quite different."

"When did you piece it together?"

"Two crime scenes later. It was raining again, and there he was, standing straight up in the rain like it was nothing. That was when it clicked. I started to buy him coffees now and then and ask him just a bit where he was staying, if things were all right, but he never talked much except to make his brilliant deductions and tell us we were all idiots."

"Did you ever find out why his head was shaved?"

"I didn't ask. I had my guesses. They do that in really hard-core rehab sometimes, so you can't hide needle marks under your hair."

"Guess it didn't take, then."

"I should say not," Lestrade shook his head. "He was much thinner then, sickly really. One day, he shows up at a crime scene and he looks – honestly, he looks like a corpse. I couldn't believe he was on his feet. So I followed him when he staggered off. He collapsed a few blocks away and as I'm calling for an ambulance, he's whispering 'please, please don't tell them my name'."

"Did you know his name at that point?"

"Yeah, yeah, though I admit I wondered if it was just made up. Weird name, right? And more of a wealthy name. Not that rich kids don't do drugs, but they don't tend to end up on the streets so often. Anyways, I had already run a background check on him just to satisfy my curiosity and there weren't any outstanding warrants, so I didn't see the harm in granting him his wish, even if it was just fever and paranoia. I grabbed his wallet and told A&E we had an unconscious John Doe."

* * *

**John's Memory** _  
_

Sherlock was staring at a pair of ducks by the river. "Mycroft and I used to raise ducks."

"For pets or for food?"

"Both. We would take care of them for a couple of years before selling them to the butcher in town. It was good enterprise. The butcher would even give us the unused organs back for dissecting."

"Ah. Real prosocial chap." Watson wasn't quite sure who he was referring to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **For readers in the US** : In the UK, the term "learning disabilities" often refers to general cognitive impairment, which in the US is called mental retardation or intellectual disability. Lestrade's reference to "sectioning" Sherlock refers to laws in the UK which allow people with severe mental illness or disability to be temporarily hospitalized for their own safety.


	3. Hungry

**Mycroft's Memory**

Father had often said, "Sherlock, if you would just _, the other children will like you much better," but Sherlock had never _ and he never got on well with the other children.

Mycroft had learned to _. Mycroft had gotten good at it.

* * *

**Conversation between John and Mycroft**

"Wait," said John, "what is…?" He made the underlining gesture Mycroft had used moments before.

"It is many things. The habits of the average mind. If you would just smile and say hello, if you would just let them bend the rules, if you would just make normal conversation."

"Fit in."

"Precisely. Receives a lot of bad press nowadays, but it is a skill that everyone must learn."

"Why," challenged John. Why should Sherlock conform himself to inferior minds? Wait, who's idea was that? It was as if now that Sherlock was dead, John had to think all the thoughts Sherlock used to.

"Whether people admit it or not," said Mycroft, "a certain degree of orthodoxy and self-suppression is required for successful social interaction. My brother's stubbornness in this regard forced him to be extremely solitary."

"So he was lonely?"

"Goodness, no. Whatever gave you that impression? He was hardly aware that other people existed."

* * *

**Mycroft's Memory**

Sherlock is eight. Mycroft is fifteen. Father is gone and Mycroft rather misses him. He is discovering the art and the science that is garnering romantic attentions and he would appreciate the advice of someone who understood the typical mind.

Mycroft asks Sherlock if he misses Father.

"No," says Sherlock, "I've deleted him," as if that were a thing that people do.

Mummy has not deleted Father. She doesn't resent Sherlock for breaking up her marriage. There was a time when she delighted in Sherlock's discoveries and triumphs. Now it seems the only thing she can enjoy about him is the way he plays his violin.

Sherlock is in trouble for fighting at school again.

She doesn't resent him.

The neighbors are complaining that Sherlock has been snooping through their post.

She doesn't resent him.

Mummy must go to a meeting at the school. It seems Sherlock reduced classmate Angelina Thompson to tears by convincing her that she was adopted. (He's right.)

She doesn't resent him, but her plan is falling apart. ( _"And don't ask me what plan, John. I don't know. I only know that she felt thwarted."_ )

Sherlock is nine and Mycroft realizes that he has been saving all of his nail clippings since he was old enough to do it himself. There's a half-full jam jar. It's disgusting.

Sherlock is ten and Mummy doesn't resent him but she goes away for several months for exhaustion. Mycroft is seventeen and he would have entered university, but he delays matriculation for one year so he can care for his brother. Mycroft is technically not of the age of majority, but he is polite and quiet and a good student and no one makes a fuss. He takes a job as a clerk for a local barrister – although he is technically unqualified, he is soon indispensable.

Mycroft tries to help Sherlock, but Sherlock doesn't want to be helped.

Mycroft invites a nice boy from Sherlock's class over to play. Sherlock abandons his guest and is found several hours later in the ambulatory surgery clinic, observing operations.

When Mycroft finds that the school psychologist has described Sherlock as "emotionally disturbed, possibly autistic or psychopathic" in her report, Mycroft approaches her and convinces her that this language may unduly stigmatize a boy who has so much potential. When Sherlock finds Mycroft's stash of condoms, he pokes holes through all of them.

Mycroft begins practicing his cello again so Sherlock will have someone to play duets with. Sherlock plays nothing but variations on _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_ for over a month.

When Mummy returns, she's different. She's quieter, more prone to worry. Although Sherlock cannot be convinced to stay out of trouble, he at least wants to avoid causing her distress. When Sherlock breaks into a neighbor's home to rummage through their bills and the police are summoned, Sherlock tells them to call Mycroft, not Mummy. Mycroft uses his contacts at the barrister's office to make sure there are no charges and he tells himself he will never do this again – he is, of course, wrong.

* * *

**John's Memory**

Sherlock was staring at the pear as if it were a mutant lifeform. He sniffed it repeatedly and turned it slowly in front of his eyes.

"Just eat it."

"I'm not hungry."

"But you're not on a case."

"But I'm not hungry."

"You're impossible."

"False. I exist, and therefore my existence must be possible."

"Well, you're not going to exist for much longer if you don't eat, so choke down the bloody pear."

"If it were indeed a bloody pear, it might interest me."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

"You pickpocketed Sherlock?" John asked. " _You_ took _his_ wallet? That's a bit of a turnaround."

"I don't think it was properly pickpocketing given that he was unconscious. There wasn't even any money, just a bunch of ID cards and badges. Mostly not his." Lestrade sighed. "People living like that, it's not uncommon for them to have enemies, and people with Sherlock's…um, personality quirks always have enemies. He knew he was in a vulnerable state, didn't want to be found."

"What exactly was wrong with him?"

"That's a question for the ages, isn't it? But medically speaking, they said he had septicemia. He must have injected a bad batch. He was the sickest I've ever seen anybody. He was on a ventilator and a feeding tube. They had to do these skin grafts on his arm and then they got eaten up by some fungus or something and they had to take out part of his liver where the bacteria were hiding."

"How long was he in intensive care?"

"Oh, it was at least three weeks and that was with him leaving a little earlier than he should have."

"So they would have had to detox him while dealing with the sepsis."

"Partially, I think they kept him on some kind of replacement drug. I don't know what, they wouldn't tell me much because I wasn't his family."

"You visited him?"

"Yeah, what can I say? I liked him. I thought it would be a, you know, a loss to the world. Besides – and I'd appreciate it if you'd keep this out of whatever story you write up – you know how me and Cecelia have been a bit off and on? Well, this was the first time we were ever off after six years of on. Maybe dropping by the hospital was better than going home to an empty flat."

* * *

**Greg's Memory**

Lestrade pulls out his earbuds when he turns the corner to Sherlock's room. The nurses think it's sweet that the police officer who found their John Doe cares enough to visit. On a not-unrelated note, one has been flirting with him, which is not what he needs right now.

There's a voice coming from the room, refined but otherwise indistinct. "So this is what your stubbornness has cost you," the man says with a sigh. "You really thought you could hide from me?"

Lestrade listens carefully, partly because it sounds a bit sinister and he is a police officer after all, and partly because he is more than a little curious about Sherlock's life.

"You owe me," the voice says, "and this is how you repay me? You're a petulant child. You think only of yourself."

Not his dealer then. Maybe family? Sherlock has never mentioned family, but then Lestrade has the feeling that Sherlock wouldn't.

"I will…make sure this does not happen again. I won't let you die." There is a catch in the man's voice before he continues. "And I will not let you live this life. You're not going to die because safety is too boring. You're going to pay your dues like everyone else."

Lestrade can hear a chair skidding back over the floor as the man stands up, his conversation with the comatose apparently over. He leans over the water fountain so he won't look like an eavesdropper. He can see expensive loafers and the tip of an umbrella when he glances across the floor. When he looks up, the man is gone.

Lestrade walks into Sherlock's room and sits down. The chair is still warm; the other man must have been there for a good while. "They say you're doing better today, now that they've got that abscess cleaned out. Mitnik sends his best, by the way. He hasn't forgotten how you saved our asses on that milk jug case. Of course, Anderson just shook his head like I told him I was going to have my ears cut off for fun, but he's a bit of a stiff, don't let him get to you."

Lestrade leans back and runs his fingers through his hair.

"You might get through this alive. Amazing when you think about it, that they can bring someone back from death like that. Seems like a bit of a waste to let you throw it all away, then? It's winter. If you go back out there, you'll just catch something else and you'll die, and that's just not right."

Sherlock's heart rate stays perfectly steady, which makes sense because they put in a some kind of pacemaker wire and also because he's in a coma and can't hear a word Lestrade is saying.

Lestrade just watches him breathe for a little while. They must have taken the respirator out since his last visit. He's still got some kind of oxygen mask, but it's good to see his chest rising and falling of its own accord. Lestrade can't explain why he likes this man. It's easy enough to explain why he thinks Sherlock is useful (because he's an incomparable crime-solving genius), but affection is harder to justify.

"I think you should stay at my flat when you get out of here," says Lestrade. He's testing the words, saying them out loud to find out if they feel right. Inviting a junkie to move in with you would generally fall squarely in the "bad idea" column, but he knows that Sherlock's not going to kill him in his sleep and anything Lestrade owns that's worth stealing is back with his wife. "Yeah," says Lestrade, "I do think that's the ticket. You might as well, right? And I don't know who that man was, but you're an adult and I think it's fair that you should have another choice."

Lestrade sits there in silence a bit longer and thinks that he was never this sentimental when he was younger. He stands up. "That's that, then? I'll be back in a couple of days. Maybe by then you'll actually be able to hear me."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

"You actually invited him into your home?" John looked faintly impressed.

Greg scratched his scalp. "Yeah, I suppose I did. Like I said, any alternative to going home to an empty flat was promising." A pause. "Would you believe I thought he might be escaped from some weird religious cult at first? He told me the man in the hospital was his brother who he wanted to avoid at all costs and that whole thing was bizarre, but what was even weirder was all the stuff he didn't know. He had no idea who the Beatles were, didn't know any of their songs – though he did know that one of them had been shot. And he didn't know _The Sound of Music_."

"He didn't know music at all?" It was odd to picture Sherlock without his violin.

"No, no, _The Sound of Music_. With Julie Andrews and teaching all the little kids to sing and then they run from the Nazis. That one. I think I've seen it a dozen times. I don't think I've ever met anyone else who hadn't seen it."

"Oh, yeah." John nodded.

"And you'll love this one. I think the figured that Harry Potter was an MP. I had all the books – well, all the ones that were out then – and he was looking at the spines so I asked him if he followed Harry Potter. He just looked at me all haughty and magnificent and said he didn't concern himself with politics."

John laughed, briefly. Lestrade could capture Sherlock's disdain-for-mere-mortals voice perfectly.

"At first, when he was weakest, he stayed there every night, he was still using so after a while, it was more that he'd come and go. I would say that for most of the time, he wasn't there more than ten nights in a month."

"I would think that an itinerant Sherlock would be a difficult houseguest."

"Oh, he was a right pain in the arse. Not one for following rules. I told him I wouldn't make it my business what he did in his spare time as long as I didn't see the evidence of it in the flat, but he'd come around high and I'm sure he kept a stash.

"We weren't pals," continued Greg, "not like you were. Sometimes I'd tell him about cases, looking for ideas, or more often I would show him photographs. But mostly we didn't interact unless he was correcting my grammar.

John nodded in acknowledgement.

"He would rifle through all my things, nothing was private. He wouldn't steal much, but I could never figure out why he took the things he did, like one time he took the envelope my electric bill came in. Not the bill itself, or the little return envelope they give you, just the outside one, and it didn't even have an address on it, just one of those little windows."

"This kept you up nights?" asked John wryly.

"One time he came around while my nephews were over for a visit. I'd told him not to do that, not to come around while family's over, especially not kids. But there he was, high and talking about something really morbid. I don't even remember what. Something like how much force you need to pull arms off or something. It upset them, they were little kids. And you have to understand, they weren't blood, but I had seen them grow up. They were my wife's sister's kids, and with me and the wife not getting along, it was a little tetchy already having them visit me without Sherlock mucking things up. So I just, I laid into him. I sent the boys back to my sister-in-law and I just screamed at him. I remember I called him a freak and a fuck up. I don't know why that sticks in memory."

Lestrade obviously thought John was judging him, because he went on. "Don't look like that. I felt bad about it. I apologized. I just lost my temper."

John nodded again, more sympathetically. He could hardly blame Greg for a single moment of frustration when his own last words before Sherlock went to the roof were to call him a machine. God that hurt to think about. "How did he react?"

"If it were anybody else, I would have said he looked blank, like he hadn't even heard me. By Sherlock standards though, I think he might have looked hurt. He mostly stayed away after that. He still responded when I texted him a picture of a crime scene." Lestrade tipped his head forward and shut his eyes, looking defeated. "I don't know."

* * *

**Greg's Memory**

Sherlock knocks on the door of the flat. Lestrade's not sure why – he has a key.

When Lestrade opens the door, he stands back to let Sherlock pass by but of course Sherlock stands stock still in the hallway. "You're welcome to come in, I don't have company."

"Can I…store something at your flat?"

"Is it stolen?"

"No."

"Is it illegal?"

"No."

"What is it?"

"Why would you bother to ask me about its origins and legality if you were just going to inquire after its identity?"

"Just answer the bloody question, Sherlock."

"It's a violin of particular quality. It'll get damaged by the elements if I don't find someplace indoors to keep it. Someplace indoors with consistent heating," he amends.

"Why do you have a violin?"

"It was a gift."

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you? Sure, you can store it here. You want to come in? I have takeaway for dinner."

"Good evening, Lestrade."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

John looked over his notes. "So he stopped by the once, and he was still answering your texts, but he wouldn't stay over? Was he still coming to crime scenes?"

"No, but we hadn't had one where we really needed him and he knew the difference, I'm sure. Until one day, we did need him. Missing kid, I wanted to bring Sherlock into NSY to look through the boy's backpack. He wasn't answering his phone, which happened a lot then. I don't know how he got the phone or how he paid for it, but service was in and out."

"So you went looking for him?"

"I had a pretty good idea of where to find him. I knew the places he frequented. He had a – calling it a bedsit would've been generous – it was this abandoned office building. Some enterprising souls had managed to keep the water running and there might have been electricity sometimes. No heat. But it's where he kept his experiments." Lestrade looked to the side. "I accused him of making meth once. All those test tubes and beakers and such."

( _"Methamphetamine is the opiate of the masses, Detective Inspector. Surely by now you know I despise such things."_

" _Yeah, plain old opiates more your style?"_

" _Hardly. Why would I wish to diminish the action of my brain?"_ )

"Anyways, I went there and tried to look as un-cop-ly as possible so everyone wouldn't run and panic and I made my way up to the third floor. And then I-" Lestrade stopped suddenly and eyed John strangely. "I don't know if I should be telling you this. I mean, I think this has a lot to do with why he stopped using, and you were his best friend, but if it were me, I wouldn't want people to know."

On the one hand, John felt thwarted. On the other, it was almost touching that Lestrade obviously cared enough about Sherlock to worry about his privacy even after his death.

* * *

**John's Memory**

After Irene Adler had been cornered in Mycroft's office and Sherlock had returned to the flat on Baker Street, he had required a fair amount of bribery in the form of tea and promises to pick up extremely strange items at the store ( _light flow tampons? not even going to ask…_ ) before he had grudgingly agreed to recount the conversation between himself, his brother, and The Woman.

The link to Moriarty was frightening, but the nicknames were almost comical. _Ice Man_ fit Mycroft so well – he had all of Sherlock's genius and none of his fire. _Virgin_ was a considerably lower grade of humor, but Watson was a military man and he could appreciate lowbrow jibes.

"You really are a virgin, then, are you?" he asked, enough teasing in his voice that he could withdraw the question if Sherlock seemed hurt. John had wondered, certainly. It was so difficult to picture Sherlock as a sexual being, but that had to be weighed against the sheer improbability of a physically attractive man making it through adolescence and young adulthood without ever having intercourse.

"No," Sherlock said, in his most imperious tone, "I'm not."

Well, that was interesting. "Men or women?"

"A man," said Sherlock, subtly highlighting the singular, "but I fail to see how this is any of your business."

"Wh-"

"Really, John, you must focus on less tawdry subjects."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next? The Ballad of Victor Trevor


	4. The Ballad of Victor Trevor

**John's Memories**

Once his last patient left for the day, John grabbed his phone debated whether to head directly home. His earlier inquiries into his flatmate's whereabouts and activities had yielded the vaguely ominous " _At barbershop, gathering hair_ ".

Further texts established that:

1\. Sherlock was running a series of experiments to determine whether different hair types burned at different rates.

2\. Sherlock was conducting this experiment in John's bedroom.

3\. Sherlock saw nothing wrong with this.

Sherlock had insisted that, since heat rises, the odor would make its way to the highest point in the flat anyway, so John's room was going to smell like burnt hair regardless, and thus conducting his experiments there was the most logical way to preserve the maximum unsullied flat space.

Apparently the idea of conducting this particular investigation out-of-doors (or not at all!) had not occurred to Sherlock.

John sighed, aware he was being a bit overdramatic. After all, a little burning hair could hardly smell worse than the triplets with rotavirus he had seen earlier that day.

He texted Sherlock: _On my way home. Was your experiment successful?_

Sherlock replied almost immediately: _Indeed. Ginger hair burns 10-14% faster than brown or blonde. SH_

John chuckled. _You should tell Mycroft._

Sherlock's answer made John smirk: _I did. He seemed to take it as a threat against his person. SH_

* * *

**Conversation between John and Mycroft**

"You would think," said Mycroft, "that his adolescence was quite tumultuous, but you would be wrong. He did have _some_ concern for our mother's well-being, after all. Thus, while he could neither be described as studious nor well-behaved, he did managed to keep the felonies to a minimum."

"Maybe he was just happy to have you out of the house." John really couldn't bring himself to be polite. Not with Mycroft, not now.

"It's possible," Mycroft acknowledged, smiling benignly.

"Was he making friends then?"

"No, no, of course not." There was that condescending voice that put John's teeth on edge. "Dr. Watson, I will admit that you have shown great concern for my brother's welfare, but there are some aspects of his…makeup that you fail to understand. You're wondering if he was lonely, if he was bullied, but I am telling you that the opinions of lesser minds did not matter to him."

* * *

**Mycroft's memory**

"Come on," Mycroft beckons to the car. "I'll take you out for ice cream."

"I don't want ice cream. You want ice cream." Sherlock is fourteen, almost fifteen, and he is busy trying to recover saliva from licked postage stamps.

"It doesn't have to be ice cream. We could stop by the reservoir on the way back. You could take samples."

Sherlock scowls because that is a tempting offer. "Why?"

"Because I want to talk to you. And you seem to despise the telephone."

"I do. It's a vile thing. If I were to invent time travel, I would prevent it from ever having been created."

"Get in the car, Sherlock."

"We go to the reservoir first."

"I imagine you want your samples to be fresh when you get them home?"

Sherlock glares, but he gets in the car.

It's easier to talk to Sherlock while they're driving someplace, Mycroft thinks, because there's no expectation for them to look at each other or to not look at each other. If Mycroft keeps his eyes on the road, he doesn't have to worry about Sherlock's eerie staring.

"Mummy's worried about you," says Mycroft with no preamble. There's no point when talking with Sherlock.

"Mummy's worried about _you_ ," Sherlock answers. "She knows you were in Berlin last month."

"I was in _West_ Berlin, traveling with the Conservatory. There was nothing dangerous about it." Mycroft huffs imperiously. "And don't try to change the subject. Mummy is concerned."

Sherlock says nothing.

"She says you didn't have anyone over for your birthday."

"There was no one I wanted to have over."

"You're approaching this all wrong. Don't think so much about liking them. Think about it as…" Mycroft searches for the best phrase, "mutual exploitation for mutual benefit."

"They don't have anything I want."

"They will."

"I doubt that highly."

Mycroft sighs. Talking to Sherlock is a supremely unproductive endeavor. "Mummy has also noticed that you don't seem to have any particular interest in dating."

"Her observation is correct, though not terribly obscure."

"Sherlock," Mycroft pauses because this was the question which he most wants to ask. "Sherlock, do you like girls?"

"I don't object to their existence."

"Don't be deliberately obtuse. I mean are you romantically attracted to them."

"No."

"You're gay then?" Mycroft has suspected this.

"No."

"Well, if you're not attracted to girls, then…"

"As usual, you have falsely foreclosed on extant alternatives."

"Who do you think about when you masturbate?"

( _John thought this was an awfully personal question from one's brother._ )

"Your question presumes that I masturbate."

"Of course you do, Sherlock. Every boy does. Honestly, you haven't been listening to that religious nonsense, have you?"

"I don't."

"You mean you don't think about anyone when you-"

"I don't masturbate. At all. Ever."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't work and I don't like it. Why would I do something I don't like?"

"Because it's pleasant."

"This may come as a shock to you, brother, but we diverge somewhat in our determination of which activities are pleasant."

"Sherlock, you can't not like sex. It is an evolutionary imperative."

Sherlock says nothing.

* * *

**Mycroft's memory**

Mycroft is sitting outside Sherlock's bedroom door. Mummy is at a neighbor's playing bridge.

"Can't I leave my pants on?" calls Sherlock through the door.

"It's much easier if you undress. Most young men make a habit of taking long showers."

Sherlock sighs, loudly enough to be heard out in the hall. "Fine, I'm fully disrobed. Can we get this over with, please?" He sounds annoyed, but maybe a little desperate. Mycroft files this information away for future reference.

"You know what to do," says Mycroft.

"If I have to do it, you have to say it." Again, the pouting has an odd twinge to it.

Mycroft squints his eyes shut. "All right. Take your penis in your hand and rub it along the length."

Sherlock says nothing, but Mycroft can hear rustling noises, movement noises, enough that he knows Sherlock is complying. There are some uncomfortable huffing sounds. Mycroft counts the seconds.

Finally, Sherlock speaks. "You said this was supposed to be enjoyable. I'm not enjoying it. Can I stop now?"

Mycroft pinches his forehead between his thumb and forefinger. He sighs and waves his hand dismissively even though Sherlock can't see it. "Yes, fine, stop."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Mycroft**

"And you don't think that was wildly inappropriate?"

"How so? I'm sure you're aware that it is nearly impossible to force Sherlock to do something he doesn't want to do. I didn't compel him, I didn't look at him, and I assure you I took no pleasure in the exercise."

"That's not the point!"

"Then what is the point?" Mycroft raised an eyebrow.

John pursed his lips. "The point is…The point is that friendships and sex are things people have to want. If you don't genuinely want it, it's not right."

"Why Dr. Watson, I'm quite certain that not even you believe such a fiction."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Mycroft**

"I suspect that you have come to view me as an unreliable narrator," said Mycroft.

"Damn straight," replied John. There was no point trying to hide these things from a Holmes.

"Ergo, I brought corroborating evidence with me today." He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a photograph.

It showed a young man with pale skin, wearing combat boots and a plaid kilt below a grey tank top and a leather jacket. His hair was slicked into two points, dyed red like devil's horns. He was obviously wearing trick contact lenses which projected images of a skull-and-crossbones over his eyes. His mouth was open wide, displaying a violently orange tongue stud.

"This," said Mycroft, "is Victor Trevor. He was a young man of wealth and intelligence who attended university at the same time as my brother. He was also the lead singer in a Rob Zombie cover band uncreatively titled _The Zombie Robbers_."

"He…looks like the lead singer of a Rob Zombie cover band."

"Indeed." Mycroft removed a laptop computer from his briefcase as well and opened it to display a video file. "Sherlock's…particular prowess was well known among his classmates, as was his interest in the macabre. Mister Trevor hired my brother for to make his concert visuals more – and I quote – 'bitchin'."

Mycroft pushed play on the video. The space looked to be a crowded warehouse, with a makeshift stage at the front. John could see Sherlock standing stiffly to the side, dressed in his usual suit and jacket, quite apart from the jostling punks on the concert floor. Victor took the stage to cheering. Once the crowd quieted, he grabbed the mike and began to sing a hippie folk ballad before cutting off his own performance with a screech and a laugh, "Nah, I'm just fookin' wit' ya!"

He was Scottish then, not just wearing the kilt for show. Although he probably was just wearing the kilt for show because it couldn't have been plainer that Victor Trevor loved attention. He hammed for the crowd and obviously followed the swallow-the-microphone school of oratory. As his guitarists laid down their first chords, a pair of skulls (real, as far as John could tell), descended onto the stage and began spitting flames. Due to the screaming nature of the music and Victor's thick brogue, the lyrics were virtually unintelligible. At one point, John could have sworn he heard " _I really like waterfalls_ " but that seemed vanishingly unlikely.

As the song progressed, further pyrotechnics – presumably the invention of one Sherlock Holmes – were evident. John could see Sherlock turning some valves off to the side. As he did so, the skulls' flame began to gradually change colors from orange, to purple, to green, to blue. During the bridge of the song, Victor appeared to breathe fire over the audience. As the song's climax approached, the warehouse ceiling was slowly flooded with what appeared to be soap bubbles. Sherlock turned another valve and a thick mist began to rise. When a bubble came in contact with the mist, it burst spectacularly, releasing a tiny hail of red sparks. The crowd roared riotously.

Sherlock looked, perhaps not pleased, but at least satisfied with the outcome. Victor Trevor had a look of rapture.

"So that," Mycroft closed the laptop, "was Victor Trevor. He was quite preoccupied with my brother for quite some time."

"Did you offer him money to spy on Sherlock too?"

"No," said Mycroft. "I offered him money to stay away."

"What? Sherlock finally makes a friend and your first move is to try to get rid of him? You're unbelievable!"

"I only wish I had succeeded. The whole affair was misguided from the beginning, and it led quite directly to Sherlock's difficulties with," Mycroft paused as if he found the word distasteful, "substances."

"So they did become friends, then?"

"I don't think either of them would have defined the interaction as a friendship, though they did spend a great deal of time together. I believe Sherlock had a certain…affection for Mister Trevor, more of an appreciation than a relationship. And Mister Trevor was not in the slightest subtle about his infatuation. He attempted to woo my brother with endless attention and increasingly extravagant gifts: tickets to the symphony, costly laboratory equipment, a holiday in America to visit the Museum of Medical Oddities. When his bids at indirectly influencing my brother's brain chemistry failed to have the desired effect, he began offering an astonishing array of illicit substances."

John looked down at the photograph of Victor Trevor. Was this Sherlock's one boyfriend? That would be…that would be good. Even if it wasn't the most balanced of relationships, this young man clearly adored Sherlock. John felt a little jealousy as well. He could acknowledge that. He had been used to being Sherlock's only friend and the frustrations that entailed, but he knew that on some level he relished the specialness.

And maybe just a little jealousy that Sherlock had been involved in a romantic relationship, which didn't make sense because John didn't think about Sherlock that way, except maybe he did, except he was straight, except…it was probably best to move on from that train of thought, John decided.

"Where is he now?" John pointed to the picture. "Did they end badly?"

"I should say so. Mister Trevor met his end in an Armenian prison quite a few years ago."

"Did you have him killed?" Paranoia was warranted, John felt.

"No, though I suspect Sherlock may have believed otherwise. They left the university mid-semester to go adventuring in former Soviet states. I know very few details of their travels; my network was far more limited at the time. I do know that they were arrested after they attempted to interfere with the operations of a local criminal syndicate. Soon after entering the prison, Victor Trevor was struck in the head by a guard's baton. His vasculature was weakened by years of substance abuse. He fell unconscious and never awoke, most likely the result of a subdural hemorrhage. You may be pleased to hear that my brother fought desperately to save his life. He even called me for help, but I was unable to mobilize my resources quickly enough."

John thought about that for a moment. He silently cursed Mycroft for correctly predicting his reaction: he did in fact savor the fact that Sherlock had fought to save his companion's life, that he was a little more of a hero than he may have thought. The jealousy was still there, irrational and immature as it might be – Victor Trevor got to die in Sherlock's arms, while he, John, had to live the rest of his life with the image of Sherlock crashing down from the hospital roof. As thoughts went, it was Victorian and dramatic, but he couldn't deny it was there.

John finally spoke. "It's good," he said. "It's good he had this, got to experience having a crush, having a boyfriend, even if it didn't end well. If he enjoyed it at all, it's still…it's a good thing."

"Dr. Watson, I fear you continue to misunderstand the nature of their relationship. While I'm certain Mister Trevor sought a sexual and romantic partner, I am equally certain that the closest they came to any sort of physical contact was a repeated scenario in which they would both consume ecstasy and Sherlock would play his violin while Victor would masturbate himself to completion."

Oddly, John's first thought was to be annoyed that Mycroft persisted in using the word 'masturbate' when there were plenty of perfectly good, less clinical-sounding synonyms. His second thought was if Sherlock's sole sexual partner hadn't been Victor Trevor, then who was it?

And why would that even matter, thought John.

But no, that question was easily answered. It mattered because it spoke to Sherlock's loneliness, the degree to which he connected with the world, and surely that related to his suicide.

John stood to leave.

"You were…exceptional in his life, John," said Mycroft. "Let nothing I say diminish that."


	5. The Most Dangerous Man You'll Ever Meet

**Conversation between John and Greg**

"We ended on sort of an odd note last time," said John. He wasn't going to push the issue, at least not unless he could be certain the information was vital. "I have a more…let's go with 'frivolous' question."

"What's that?"

"What was he wearing? I mean those years when he was, well, not exactly homeless, but you know. I'm so used to picturing him in the pressed shirts and expensive coats, but he couldn't have been dressing like that, right?"

Lestrade nodded. "I wish I had a picture to show you. He wore the strangest things. I mean, it's understood that people in that situation don't have a lot of options, but even so, his clothes were weird. I suppose he just wore anything he found. Fashion is just a social convention, right? So he honestly looked like a cross between a chav and an unemployed acrobat. With a fedora."

John's laugh was sounding just a bit more genuine. "He wore a fedora?"

"Yeah, I haven't thought about that in years. One of the guys, Mitnik – he's gone now, moved to Belgium to be with his wife's family – he always called Sherlock 'Tommy' because of it, like a tommy gun, and Sherlock didn't even seem to mind too much."

"So how did his taste in clothes change?"

"I don't know for sure, really, but I pointed out to him that I could get him onto more crime scenes and I could get him into morgues and NSY and such to look at evidence a lot more easily if he wore something more normal. Next time I saw him, he was wearing slacks and a button-down."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Mycroft**

"Are your parents living?"

"No."

"How did they die?"

"We had no contact with our father after he left, though as an adult, I began to monitor his activities. He died of a heart attack at the age of 59. Our mother developed Pick's dementia while Sherlock was in his teens and died a few months before his eighteenth birthday."

John was silent for a moment. He had learned in medical school, of course, about the early-onset dementias, the ones that could strike in middle age, but he had been preparing for a career in the military and he had paid the information little mind. He tried to imagine an adolescent Sherlock managing a parent with dementia and failed. His mind simply could not generate the image.

"She had a visiting nurse," added Mycroft. "I would not have left her to be Sherlock's responsibility." He paused. "She had progressive nonfluent aphasia. Talking with her became increasingly futile. He would play his violin for her. I believe she enjoyed that."

Bringing joy to a demented geriatric was almost astonishingly selfless by Sherlock's standards. John didn't say that out loud, though; instead he asked, "You said she died before his eighteenth birthday. Who took custody of him?"

"I did, which he resented for years, despite the fact that it was purely a formality and involved no changes in his living situation or activities."

"So then he went off to university-"

"Whereupon he alienated his classmates, became addicted to cocaine, and pointlessly risked life and limb in a post-Soviet gulag. Yes, independence suited him well."

* * *

**John's memory**

Sebastian Wilkes is showing off his familiarity with Sherlock's 'trick'.

"Put the wind up everybody, we all hated him. Come down to breakfast in the formal hall and this freak would know you'd been shagging the previous night."

There isn't a good word for the look on Sherlock's face. He's not ashamed or embarrassed. He's doesn't exactly look hurt or unhappy. But he certainly doesn't look indifferent.

* * *

**Mycroft's memory**

His phone is ringing again.

Mycroft Holmes has just called in exactly fourteen favors, has just spent weeks on the phone in a dozen languages, has just personally blackmailed both an Armenian and an Azerbaijani civil servant, all to extract his brother from the mess he got himself into. He's even managed to repatriate the body of Victor Trevor.

And his phone is ringing again.

He lets it ring. Let them leave a voicemail. Mycroft knows what it will be: We don't know how it happened, we really don't, but your brother has apparently managed to coerce a staff member to bring him drugs, has escaped and run off into the night, has somehow clearly been using even though we can't find contraband anywhere.

The problem, really, was that Sherlock could outsmart any rehabilitation facility.

There was only one person in the UK who could consistently match wits with Sherlock Holmes, and so there was only one way to drag him out of this little pit he'd dug for himself.

( _"It was your clothes," interrupted John. "Someone," he wouldn't use Lestrade's name, "said they saw Sherlock, years ago in London, wearing fancy clothes that didn't fit him well."_

" _I hope someone also told you about how my brother's addiction nearly cost him his life. Moderation is not Sherlock's way. I knew how things were going to progress. I tried to save him."_

" _You tried to detox him, to rehabilitate him yourself."_

" _That's right."_

" _And he escaped."_ )

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

John handed Lestrade a beer. "Is your back feeling any better?"

"Yeah, a bit. Firm mattress does wonders."

They both drank in silence for a few minutes, before Greg spoke. "I told you I wouldn't want anyone to know if it were me, but it wasn't me. It was Sherlock, and I think he would want you solve the puzzle."

John put down his beer. There was no arguing with that. "All right," he said, "so you were at Sherlock's building, looking for his room, and then what happened?"

Lestrade stretched to the side and straightened his chair. It allowed him to look right ahead without directly facing John. "I hear a voice, and I think it's Sherlock, and it sounds like pain. A moaning sound. Then I hear a difference voice and it says, 'If you would relax, you might enjoy it.' Then I hear the first voice again and I know it's Sherlock this time and it says, 'My enjoyment is clearly not the point of this exercise'. Then it's the other voice making a…a finishing sound." Lestrade shut his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair before looking back at John as if to check that his innuendo was sufficiently clear. "It didn't sound like force, it was obviously a transaction, which isn't legal either of course, but in my experience, getting the law involved never made those situations better, especially if you didn't know the details."

John's beer sat untouched. He had never really thought about the specifics of life as a hard-core junkie, but it made sense.

"I went outside, had a smoke, just killed time for fifteen minutes or so. I wanted to give him time to clean himself up a bit, didn't want to embarrass him. I mean, he knew that I knew anyway, didn't expect otherwise, but there's knowing and there's _knowing_."

"So after I wasted some time, I headed back up the stairs to look for him, and there he was, in his bedsit, surrounded by all his test tubes and beakers and whatnot and he says to me, 'I assume you're here about the missing boy'."

* * *

**Greg's memory**

They go to NSY. Sherlock looks at the evidence and makes his deductions. He tells them where they should look for the boy.

"He's dead, isn't he?" asks Lestrade.

"Yes, that is most likely."

"Do you know if he died quickly?"

"I'm not a psychic. I only have his knapsack. Your medical examiner should be able to give you the time of death."

Lestrade has Sherlock wait in his office while they search. Sherlock has never been a man of astonishing emotional competence in the best of times and Lestrade suspects that this is not the best of times. He wants to help Sherlock, but he also doesn't want the boy's family to hear one of Sherlock's correct, but unbelievably insensitive remarks. And the office will keep Sherlock busy. Lestrade locks his filing cabinet and his desk, knowing that this will virtually compel the man to pick the locks.

They find the boy's body.

Lestrade goes back to NSY to pick up Sherlock. Sherlock is sitting on the floor tapping the fingers on his left hand manically against his knee. Lestrade's desk and his cabinet are untouched (or at least, if Sherlock did break in, he was subtle about it).

Lestrade hopes Sherlock wasn't stupid enough to actually shoot up in a police station, but that's a question for another day. He's tired. They're both tired.

Driving is a good time to talk about uncomfortable things, but even so, Lestrade's not sure what to say. "It's dangerous," he blurts out, finally.

"It's actually much safer than the alternative," says Sherlock.

"No, you _think_ it's safe because you think you can know everything and predict everything, but you can't. You make one mistake, you take one client who isn't exactly what you think he is. Sherlock, do you know how many people in that… situation are on my caseload?"

"I don't have 'clients'."

"Who was that, then? Your dealer?"

Sherlock smirks. "I suppose so. Yes, we'll call him my dealer."

"I just think it's a bit of rubbish, is all. You have the most amazing mind I've ever met, so I just think it's bullshit you would be paying for things with your body."

"Really? I think it's rather elegant. The body is just transport for the mind," says Sherlock, but he doesn't sound as certain and aloof as he usually does. He sounds just the slightest bit unsure.

So Lestrade presses forward. "Yeah? Last I checked, your brain was part of your body. How do you think all that coke finds its way in? Little fairies?"

"And what is your point?"

"My point is that I think you're meant for more than this and I think you want out of this." They stop at a light and Lestrade glances over a Sherlock, who looks even paler than usual. "Look," he says, "I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to really think about it before you answer. Do you want me to arrest that man?"

"No!" The word is out of Sherlock's mouth in an instant. He tents his fingers. "No, stay away from him."

"This has been going on a while, then?" Sherlock's silence is confirmation. "Who is he?"

"He's the most dangerous man you'll ever meet."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Mycroft**

There was something sick and roiling in John. He could think, he could suspect, but he couldn't just deduce and be sure the way that Sherlock could. Maybe if Sherlock were alive, it would have been different, maybe then the suspicion would have been enough. But Sherlock wasn't alive and John was having a much harder time finding rage in himself.

Before Mycroft even sat down: "You're a monster. You're…you…you, he was your brother and you…"

"Yes," Mycroft said, cold as ever, "he was and I did."

Because of course Mycroft could guess immediately what John was talking about. Probably had wiretaps on John's whole life.

"I did it to save him," said Mycroft. "He was killing himself. He very nearly died. If I kept trying to keep him away from suppliers, to force him into rehabilitation facilities, he would have kept enjoying outsmarting me, thwarting me. Do you understand? The game for its own sake was as addictive as any drug."

"You're a monster."

"I saved his life. When he got it from me, it was pure, no adulterants, no blood-borne diseases. I ensured that. And I made sure that the only way he could get it at all was to face the two things he hated most in the world."

"Sex…and…you," said John slowly, shallow breaths between each word. "He was your brother and you–god, you're a monster!"

"He would have died if not for me!"

"Well, he's not alive now, is he? And who's fault is that?"

There was a thin twitch across Mycroft's face, like a slap, a look of horror and guilt and misery so brief John could hardly believe it had been there.

"Get out of this place." John was trembling. "I never, never want to see you again."

* * *

**John's memory**

It's the morning after the incident at the pool. John had spent the rest of that horrible night answering questions for the police and submitting to the ministrations of ambulance workers. He is exhausted, but he doesn't want to sleep. He knows what's waiting for him in sleep.

He drags himself up the stairs anyway. He has to sleep sometime. He finds himself looking in all the corners of his room, like a child checking for monsters. He sighs and lets himself look in the closet. It's all right to be a little ridiculous now and then.

He doesn't feel like changing clothes. He doesn't want to put anything new on, because he can already feel his skin crawl at the thought of donning a new shirt. It will feel like putting on the Semtex, and he will deal with that, but not until he gets some sleep. He doesn't feel like changing clothes, so he strips down to his undershirt and shorts and crawls into bed.

It's not long before he enters his first REM state and it is predictably awful. He's in Afghanistan and the enemy is unseen but he knows it is Moriarty. He's somehow linked to a network of IEDs. He's going to kill his fellow soldiers and they're going to kill him. And there are shots being fired and someone is calling his name.

"John," says Sherlock, "please wake up." He's standing in the doorway. "I heard you shouting."

"Sorry," says John, "sorry, I'll keep it down."

"No, I-" Sherlock looks at him strangely. Then, quite suddenly, he crosses John's room in two steps and he puts his arms around John. His eyes are mostly shut. The hug is a bit awkward, truth be told. John has seen Sherlock hug people socially, as a pro forma greeting, but this is meant as comfort, as emotion in physical form, and Sherlock's movements here are obviously deliberate and effortful, like speaking a second language.

As Sherlock releases him, John shivers. The two events aren't necessarily related. John knows he sometimes gets the shakes after a particularly bad nightmare, when he's flooded with adrenaline.

But Sherlock interprets the shiver differently, because he sits down on John's bed to hug him again, still gawky and strange. "I won't," he says, "I won't allow anyone to harm you. That is the line they cannot cross. You are surprisingly…necessary in my life."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

"I need you to, here, to hold on to this." John held out his gun, handle forward.

Lestrade took it. "Are you suicidal?"

"No, I'm not, I just, I shouldn't have it. Right now, I shouldn't have it."

Lestrade nodded and began removing the firing pin. He tucked that in his pocket along with the clip before handing the weapon back to John. "Now neither of us has a gun."

"They took your piece?"

"Yeah, no gun while I'm suspended. Feels weird."

John walked out of Greg's flat, his mind replaying Sherlock's fall, the way he kicked at the air and grabbed for a handhold that wasn't there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Technical note:** 'Demented' is in fact a proper adjective for someone who has dementia. Neurologists and geriatricians use it all the time in their communications with each other. They tend to omit it from their communications with patients and families because it has gradually taken on other connotations.


	6. Cravings

**John's therapist**

John was sitting across from his therapist, deliberately keeping his arms apart so she wouldn't accuse him of being 'closed' or 'defensive'.

"I'm glad you decided to return, John."

"Well, under the circumstances…"

"Your friend's de-."

"Right." John cut her off. He didn't want to hear her say anything about Sherlock, let alone _that_.

"So, how have you been spending your time?"

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

"I gotta ask, since you're asking me all these questions," said Lestrade. "Did you ever ask Sherlock about his drug history? You had just met him, right? When we had that first case?"

"Oh, yeah, with your fake-but-not-really drugs bust?"

"That's the one. Your reaction cracked me up. So did you ever bring it up with him?"

"No, there just never seemed to be a good time, seeing as it was only a short while before I had sort of accused him of possibly being a serial killer and then he was off with the real killer and then he was…just…being Sherlock."

"Yeah, that alone really discourages conversation."

"Doesn't mean I didn't wonder about it, whether he'd been an addicted and to what – some people use but they don't get hooked, though it sounds like that was not the case for him."

Greg shook his head, agreeing with John's assessment.

"You're looking a little tired," said John. "Do you want a break from all of this?"

"No, no, don't worry about it. Besides, we've only got a bit before the part of the story where you show up, and I figure you can take it from there."

* * *

**Greg's memory**

Sherlock is playing the violin. There's an occasional wrong note here and there, but he's really, really good, the quality of each note is just exceptional. Lestrade's tastes don't usually tend toward the hoity-toity, so classical music is not precisely his forte, but he knows the difference between some grade-schooler scratching away and something that sounds like professional music.

Just one more incredible thing in case Greg forgets to be impressed with him.

Sherlock stops playing quite suddenly, in the middle of the melody, not at a natural stopping point. "You should know," he says, "that I don't, that I am not-" His eyes dart from side to side as if searching for a word. He apparently doesn't find it because he resumes playing from exactly the point where he stopped.

* * *

It has been two weeks since Greg overheard Sherlock and his 'dealer'. Since then Sherlock has stayed at his flat about every other night, eyes bloodshot. He is obviously using more heavily.

"I want you to lock me up."

"Well, I'm sure you'll find there are a lot of people out there who want to see you locked up. So how long are you planning." Lestrade turns the page of his newspaper. If he really thinks about what Sherlock is saying, his reaction would be different, but he hasn't had his coffee and it sounds like another crazy plan.

"I believe anywhere from one to four weeks is customary."

Lestrade rewinds the conversation in his mind. "You want to detox?"

"I have weighed all of the variables and I-"

"Sure, I can do that. I'll find you a nice cell down by arson so you won't run into anyone you know."

Sherlock says nothing. Lestrade wonders when his last hit was.

"I've got two conditions," says Lestrade. "First, you tell me exactly what you've been taking for the past year so I've got some idea what your withdrawal is going to look like. Second, I'm being up front with you that I will call in a doctor if I think it's necessary. I'm not asking for your to be cooperative or anything – I'm realistic – I'm just letting you know that it could happen."

"I've taken caffeine, nicotine, ethyl alcohol, cocaine, and heroin."

"Heroin? Fuck! What, did you just do a little internet search for things you could take that would actually be worse for you than cocaine?"

"Speedballs."

Lestrade knows the term 'speedball'. It's a potent combination of cocaine and heroin, meant to enhance the high and smooth the crash of each constituent drug. It's also the cause of dozens of overdose deaths each year.

"But I last did one of those approximately five weeks ago, so I believe I'm past any withdrawal specifically from the heroin."

"Well, all right then." Lestrade stands. "Let's go."

"Now?"

"No, next Tuesday. Yes, of course right now! Grab a couple blankets. The ones they have there are shit."

* * *

"So the Commonwealth does actually have some empty prison cells."

"Well, you know, I set a few arsonists free to make space for you. One of them was pretty clever and he threatened to do it again, so I might have made a new case for you to solve along the way."

"Job security," mused Sherlock.

"Go on, then. Get in there."

Sherlock hesitates at the door to the cell before screwing his eyes upward, breathing deeply, and stepping inside.

"There's a good lad," says Lestrade, "I knew you had it in you."

"I'm entering acute withdrawal and still you insist on tormenting me with your mawkish sentimentality?"

* * *

They are six hours in.

Sherlock is pacing restlessly in his cell.

Lestrade is singing along with pretty much anything they play on the radio. Anything.

" _Girls who like boys / who like boys to be girls / who do boys like they're girls / who do girls like they're boys_ "

It's what he always does while he's doing mindless paperwork.

" _Brown sugar / how come you taste so good?_ "

He'd be bored out of his mind otherwise. Irritating Sherlock is fun for Lestrade and it gives Sherlock something to think about other than the cravings.

" _Sweet dreams are made of these / who am I to disagree?_ "

He's not a particularly good singer, but Sherlock does see fit to remark on the impressive breadth of his lyrical repertoire. ("I suspect there is a connection between your remarkable ignorance on matters of criminal deduction and your decision to fill your mind with an incredible array of such nonsense.")

" _It ain't me / it ain't me / I ain't no millionaire's son_ "

"Now you're doing it on purpose! That song isn't even from your era and the grammar is atrocious."

"I've got a half-brother who's fifteen years older than me," says Lestrade. "He made sure I grew up with the classics."

* * *

They are twelve hours in.

"Bored. Bored. Bored! Bored! BORED!"

"You're like the opposite of the Incredible Hulk."

"I neither know nor care what you're referring to."

"Oh, it was a comic book when I was a boy. He always says, 'You won't like me when I'm angry!' and then starts smashing stuff."

"Quality literature. Explains your advanced educational development."

"You're the same way though, except for boredom instead of anger. When you get bored, something's going to get destroyed."

"Ridiculous."

Lestrade shook his head and returned to his newspaper for a moment before hollering, "SHERLOCK SMASH!"

* * *

"This place is filthy." Sherlock is scratching at his arms.

"Her majesty's finest," agrees Lestrade.

"There are, there are lice in here." The scratching intensifies.

"No, there aren't. You brought the blanket in from my flat, remember?"

"I can, I can almost, I can see them. They're under my skin. They're moving. They're moving inside my skin. I can feel them."

"And you thought this would be boring," says Greg blandly while fiddling with his phone, trying to keep one eye on Sherlock. He's not quite drawing blood; his nails aren't that long and he's a bit too lethargic to really go all out.

"I wonder if these are a new species of insect," Lestrade muses out loud, trying to keep Sherlock distracted because it will be a good while until the doctor arrives. But of course she does, eventually. It's really only twenty minutes, but it feels longer and Lestrade really hopes this doesn't happen again.

"Sherlock, stick your arm through the bars. This is Dr. Hooper, she's going to give you something for the bugs."

Molly Hooper gives a little wave and a little smile as Sherlock staggers to the front of the cell.

"The dermis," huffs Sherlock, "shouldn't be detaching from the lower layers like this. I hope you-" he smacks an invisible bug on his thigh "-have accounted for all of the variables."

"Stay still," she replies, as she presses a thin needle into his upper arm. "You should lie down," she says, "because you're going to be doing that anyway, and it's better to be closer to the ground."

"Damn you! Don't just sedate me! I'm not delusional! They're real, I can feel them moving about! This is a plot! This…is…" Sherlock collapses to the ground.

Molly shakes her head. "I told him to lie down. Much easier on the knees that way."

"Thank you for coming by," Lestrade smiles. "Now we're even for that thing in Portsmouth," he says with a friendly wink.

"Right then," says Molly. She blushes slightly. "Who is he? Not just a regular prisoner, I assume."

"A…ah, well, let's say he's a friend of mine. He's a genius, if you can believe that."

"I can. He looks sort of…I don't know, sort of peaceful or contemplative lying there."

Lestrade snorts. "I wouldn't call him either of those."

"Well," says Molly, writing quickly on a scrap of newspaper. "This is my cell. If he gets worked up again, give me a call."

* * *

Sherlock is lying flat on the floor of his cell, blanket over his face.

"I need it, I need it, I need it, I need it, I-"

"That's nice," says Lestrade in a bored sort of voice. "Why don't you take a look at the case I brought you?"

"It's not a real case," snaps Sherlock. "I am not a child to be patronized with make-work projects."

"It is a real case; it's just an old one. It's from 1981. I bet that's before you were born. Come on, you could be the world's first prenatal detective."

"I need it, I need it, I need it, I-"

"Victim was clearly shot in the head. There's a shell casing on the ground. The bullet wound goes straight through the skull and into the middle of the brain where it stops, but there's no bullet there. The wound is clean; no one went in there with tweezers or anything to pull it out. But they never found the bullet."

Sherlock sits up. "Did she know any electricians?"

* * *

There is a man, standing in the corridor and leaning on an umbrella. He's well-dressed, too fancy to be from NSY itself. And detectives wouldn't usually be down here anyway. Contrary to Sherlock's oft-stated opinion, Lestrade is not a complete idiot; he draws the logical conclusion.

"You're the man from the hospital, Sherlock's brother," says Lestrade, "aren't you? How did you get in here?"

"You'll find that Sherlock is not the only genius in the family."

"Yeah, that's lovely, but you're not supposed to be in here."

"I am, like you, merely concerned about his well-being." The umbrella swings in a vertical arc. "You are, I am certain, aware that acute detoxification is only the first stage of rehabilitation. I simply wished to offer-"

"Mycroft!" hisses Sherlock. "Get out of here!" Sherlock leaps to his feet and glares menacingly through the bars. "Get out!"

Mycroft smiles patiently. "I appreciate what you've done for him thus far. Here, my card. Please contact me when he is ready to leave this place."

"Yeah, I'm sure Sherlock knows how to get in touch with you himself," says Lestrade, keeping his hands firmly in his pockets. "He's a clever bloke."

"I insist."

Lestrade takes the card. He really doesn't know who this Mycroft is or why Sherlock dislikes him, but he does know the law and the law says that unless they're utterly crazy, adults get to make their own decisions. He leans his head back toward the cell. "Sherlock, you want to do the honors or shall I?"

A hand reaches out from between the bars. "I'll take that."

Greg hands it over, never looking away from Mycroft Holmes. He really tries to keep a serious face, but it's damn difficult when he hears Sherlock unzipping behind him. ( _"And you want to know the craziest thing, John? He's got perfect aim. Right on the card. Seriously, it was uncanny."_ )

Mycroft sighs mightily and mutters something about 'immature' and 'dramatic.' He begins to walk away, then pauses. "Sherlock, please, please do not allow this to dissuade you from continuing, but I am terribly proud you have made it this far."

* * *

**Conversation between John and Greg**

"You actually stayed with him while he detoxed?" Having spent time with Sherlock while he was in nicotine withdrawal, John felt this was an unusually large sacrifice.

"Not the whole time, but for a while, yeah. I had a bit of leave built up, nothing better to spend it on. I figured he shouldn't be alone in case he starts having a heart attack or choking on his own vomit or something."

"Physical withdrawal from cocaine is actually fairly benign."

"Well, that's not exactly my department, is it? I just looked it up on Wikipedia. There were a couple of guys down in corrections who owed me favors and they agreed to keep an eye on him when I couldn't be around."

"I'm sure he appreciated your company." John thought back to the few substance abuse cases he had dealt with and added, "In his own way."

"Once he started really getting down to it, he was an absolutely miserable son of a bitch, just lying there on the ground shouting that this was intolerable. He didn't even have enough energy to be clever about his insults so he was just calling everybody stupid and moaning about how he hated them."

John nodded. "Cocaine withdrawal is really quite a lot like a severe depression."

"Well, and most of what he said, you just ignore it, right? I mean, you know that maybe his brain's a little different and he doesn't quite get all that politeness stuff. And you know that it's just the craving talking, so it should really just roll right off of you. But there's knowing and there's _knowing_ , right?"

"What did he say?" asked John. It was fairly obvious where this was going.

"I had a daughter," said Lestrade. "I don't know if I ever mentioned. Her name was Naomi. She died a few weeks after her fourth birthday."

"I'm so sorry, that's awful."

"She had Tay-Sachs disease. Normally I have to explain what that is, but with you being a doctor, I guess you've heard of it."

John nodded. It was an inherited disease of the nervous system, devastating and inevitably fatal. A child could only develop the disease if both parents carried the gene; it probably explained why Greg and his wife never had any other children. "Are you Jewish?" It was most common in Ashkenazi Jews, if John remembered his textbooks correctly.

"No. Cecelia is, but I'm not. It's rare, but it happens. Bad luck, eh? Anyways, Sherlock deduced all of this pretty quickly after we met and I told him that he was never allowed to talk about Naomi, ever. And would you believe, he actually listened? He really didn't bring her up. He really didn't. Until he was lying in that cell, miserable and vicious."

"Oh, god." Sherlock's normal tendency to twist the knife would have been unbearably cruel under those circumstances.

"Yeah. Like I said, I knew not to take it personally, but there's knowing and there's _knowing_. I had to get out of there. I just couldn't be in the same room as him anymore. I really couldn't, but the guy from corrections wasn't getting out for another couple of hours." He looked up at John apologetically. "See, I had this new Sergeant who I knew wasn't on any cases because we hadn't gotten any new ones since the transfer. So I called her up and asked her for a favor."

"Her…" John echoed, then his face fell. "Not Donovan?"

Lestrade nodded. "Yep, Sally Donovan. Hell of a first impression, meeting somebody when they're detoxing. I really don't know what he said to her but I can imagine."

"Guess that explains her…animosity."

"Try not to be too hard on her," said Greg. "If it wasn't for her, you two might never have met."

"I don't…" John shook his head, confused.

"After going through the whole detox thing, Sherlock was able to work sort of consulting odd jobs at St. Barts, figuring out why a machine was giving the wrong test results, that sort of thing. I tried to help him get a flat, because the common wisdom is that hanging around other junkies just makes relapse more tempting, and his old bedsit was full of 'em."

"Do you think that rule applies to Sherlock?"

"Don't rightly know. He wasn't exactly the peer pressure type, was he? But that place was nasty and dangerous, and it was probably best for him not to run into his old dealer. So we'd find these flats – cheap, very cheap places, but livable. He'd move in, move all his test tubes, but he would keep sleeping over at my flat. Not to mention he'd bicker with the landlord or get in trouble for noxious fumes or body parts or whatever crazy crap he was working with."

"Yes, Mrs. Hudson was astonishingly tolerant."

"Anyways, I'm complaining about it one day and Sally says, 'Well, maybe he doesn't really want a flat. Maybe what he really wants is a flatmate,' and I never would have thought that on my own, 'cause he seems so standoffish, but I started to think that maybe he really wanted to live with somebody."

"So you gave his name to Mike Stamford?"

"No, give me some credit. I'm cleverer than that. I just started casually mentioning that it's too bad Sherlock couldn't afford someplace nice in the middle of London, where he'd be closer to all the crimes and he could get to the bodies before somebody," Lestrade coughed the word _Anderson_ , "messed them all up."

"Let him come up with the idea of a flatmate."

"Right. He didn't like to be led around by the nose, but once he got the idea, he asked around on his own, and that's how Mike Stamford knew he was on the market for a flatmate, and that's how the two of you got introduced."

* * *

**John's therapist**

"I've been…talking with people who knew him. I thought if I could understand why he did it, maybe I would…"

"What have you found out?"

As if John could just answer that question. As if he could sum up in a few sentences Sherlock's life before Baker Street. He tried to picture the events Mycroft and Lestrade had described for him ( _an eight-year-old Sherlock innocently breaking up his family_ ) ( _a teenager playing the violin for his uncommunicative mother_ ) ( _a university student with an infatuated sidekick_ ) ( _a junkie in a holding cell, scratching at his skin_ ) but all he could see when he closed his eyes was his friend's flailing form plummeting to the earth.

"I found out…" John began, still struggling for words, "I found out that I'll never understand it and I don't feel any better."


End file.
